


Beloved, Such Teeth!

by GuzzleBlood



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Bacchanalian Feasts, Blood and Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Emily Kaldwin, Macabre, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:06:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23453728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuzzleBlood/pseuds/GuzzleBlood
Summary: The future has little to offer Emily but despair.  She will never be able to stand at her lover's side; she will never be safe from plots to usurp her throne.  Anguished and embittered, Emily decides that the only way to ensure her happiness is to take reality into her own hands and change it to her whims.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Emily Kaldwin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	Beloved, Such Teeth!

High Overseer Corden speaks first.

“The timing is rather belated,” is the first counterargument, one that Emily had predicted and is so banal that she barely keeps from rolling her eyes. “Most inauspicious by my account. I hadn’t thought to consult the calendars but even on estimate, I don’t believe there’s precedent for such a thing.”

Behind her, Corvo clasps his hands and the fabric of his trousers whispers as he reaffirms his stance.

“Timing is my very object, High Overseer,” Emily says, lets them all see her hands folded elegantly on the table in front of her. “This is not a matter of age but a matter of will.”

“Her Majesty makes a salient argument,” Barrister Lawrence says. “This is not a matter for the court of law—”

“Then your perspective is quite uninformed, isn’t it?” the High Overseer interrupts.

“—but rather the court of public opinion. The Empress has not had her due Rite of Majority. She is beholden to it on the demand of her own people.”

“I’ve heard no such demands,” remarks Councilor Ebbing as she diligently dots her I’s and crosses her T’s in the ledger. “The common folk have no rousing opinions on the matter. It’s not as if there have been riots in the streets over Her Majesty’s long-endured celibacy. Stamp taxes, on the other hand….”

“Oh, you wouldn’t hear dissent from the _working class_ , Winnifred,” Councilor Le Roy says, comfortable enough to roll his eyes and earn Councilor Ebbing’s pursed lips in a painted scowl. “It’s the noble houses that are gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands over the event. Their debutantes and young bachelors have been gathering dust in the parlor corners, wasting away their prime years in hopes that they might gain our wise Empress’ favor.”

“Unfortunately the auspiciousness of the occasion does pull more weight than the whims of fickle society,” Grand Councilor Mahir says and Emily meets his eyes steadily across the long, dark table. “There is a precedent to be kept, Your Highness.”

“The time has passed, Grand Councilor, for fulfilling precedence,” Emily asserts as her hands sweat. “I have a duty to uphold to my Empire, my throne, my people, and my legacy. By the grace and memory of my blessed mother, Empress Jessamine Kaldwin,” (Barrister Selks, who hasn’t said a word this whole time but frowned in every line of her face, sighs sharply), “who conceived me on the night of her own Rite.”

“With all due respect, Your Excellency,” Mahir says – Emily’s fingers tighten, “Empress Jessamine Kaldwin followed the tenants of the Rite to the letter: at the proper age, by the blessing of the Abbey. If your argument is that it is imperative to abide by the example that she set, then you have already failed.”

“Not by any gross neglect or malicious intent,” Emily counters. She stands now; Corvo draws out her chair carefully to soften its sound against the polished floor. “Do not mistake my objective, respected ladies and gentlemen: I have called this council to submit my initial announcement, not to appeal for your permission. On the night of New Moon that bridges the Month of Clans and the Month of Songs, I will Ascend by Rite and upon next morn, declare my intention to court.” 

Her voice rings in the chamber, reverberating off glass and shining marble and ebony. The silence that follows is contentious with stifled outrage and satisfaction in equal measures. Emily holds her chin straight and holds still her trembling; they must not see her shake. 

“Councilor Le Roy,” she says and turns to him.

“Your Majesty,” he stands to bow to her.

“I’m delegating you to oversee the Hosting Committee. Please put together a group of trusted individuals to assist you and submit the list to me first thing tomorrow morning.”

“At once, Your Majesty.”

“The rest of you are dismissed,” Emily says, casting her gaze coldly over the lot of them. Some bow their heads placidly. The rest glare back, thin-lipped and disapproving. Emily can scent the months of political stonewalling she’s going to face as recompense for this move.

So be it. 

She leaves with her head held high, her gaze towards the far horizon that’s beyond the solid walls of the Tower. Behind her, Corvo’s footsteps follow. They walk with brisk strides, loud and overlapping like her unsteady heartbeat. Corvo closes and locks her study door behind them once they’re safely inside and Emily falls into the chair behind her desk. 

“There won’t be an inch for the tax amendments this year,” she sighs and pulls her knife from her belt. The top drawer has a whetstone which she takes in hand. “If I pull another stare-down like that, I think the kindest thing I might get would be a swift dagger in the back.”

“It’s not that bad,” Corvo soothes. His voice is low and gentle, a balm to the anxiety that’s pulled tight along her forearms as she sharpens her blade in quick, repetitive strokes. “Rebuilding after Delilah has been its own hardship. Things are finally beginning to show an even keel. If anything, now is the perfect time to be demonstrative.”

“The council doesn’t want me demonstrative; they want me appeased with the illusion of contribution while they assemble a democracy beneath me and turn the Empress into a figurehead,” Emily snaps. Corvo frowns sadly and Emily glares at the knife and stone in her hand, unwilling to look at him, bearing her guilt and anger like nausea in her stomach. “This grandstanding buys me some time, helps the worst of them think all I care about is courting and my mother’s legacy.” She looks up at Corvo as he leans against the edge of her desk. “The next time I strike at Mahir’s overzealous industrial expansion plans, I’ll suddenly find half the working class picketing at the gates and five conflicting petitions on my desk.”

She’s disarmed by the warmth of Corvo’s hand cupping her cheek. The knife clatters onto the desk and Emily collapses into his careful, supportive grip, angry tears fighting to flow. 

“It’ll be alright, sweetheart,” Corvo says and Emily hides her face in his stomach as he pets her hair. “It’s alright.”

“I’m so exhausted,” Emily says. Her throat is thick and aching with a sob that she wants to release. Corvo caresses her, cradles her in his lap and carefully tugs her hair down so he can brush his fingers gently through. 

“You’ve been holding up well against the barrage,” he praises her. Emily folds her arms across his thighs and shuts her eyes, just for a moment. She wishes she could retreat ten years or so, just to be a little girl in her father’s arms again. “I’m proud of you.”

“I feel like a farce some days.” Most days. 

“You’re doing well,” Corvo says. His hand is gentle and steady against her back, rubbing in slow circles.

“I barely have a gauge to know if that’s the truth,” Emily says. “At this point, I barely care. I’m rewarding myself for the misery of it all, deserved or not.” She rises from Corvo’s lap and takes his hands, smiling at his smile. This smile that is only for her. “I can have my victory for now. I’ll have my Ascension.”

There’s quietly present anguish in Corvo’s eyes as Emily lifts to kiss his lips but he kisses back nonetheless.

“Yes,” he says. Merely the sound of him affirming her is like insulation wrapping around her frayed nerves. “I’m excited for you. For us.” 

Emily strokes her thumbs against the whiskers of his beard, willing him to feel her love as she gazes into his eyes. 

“Not many have the privilege of accompanying the Rite of two empresses,” she teases him. “None, I think, in fact.”

Corvo chuckles warmly as he cups her hand against his cheek. 

“Unfortunately, that legacy will never be known,” he says. “It’ll have to be another secret for us.”

“That’s fine by me,” Emily says and kisses him again. His arm wraps around her back to keep her close and when their kiss breaks, Corvo rests his forehead against her shoulder and sighs. Emily presses kisses into his hair, massaging the back of his neck. She knows his thoughts. Knows that in the depths of his heart, Corvo is thinking not on the upcoming celebration or the indulgence of their plan coming to fruition. He is far into the future, reminding himself that Emily will one day have to marry some yet undefined courtier. 

Though they haven’t discussed it outright, Emily knows that once she does wed, she won’t have Corvo’s kisses anymore. He won’t suffer to let her have him in shadows, knowing she’ll have to return to a bed that belongs to someone else.

Even though she despises that inevitability, she can’t really begrudge him wanting to discontinue their sexual passions at that. If it were Corvo who had another partner to return to at the end of the night, Emily isn’t sure she could stand letting him hold her, either.

They both think on this but they do not speak a word, instead clinging to each other all the more tightly. Corvo won’t say it aloud now, not while he’s trying so earnestly to keep her in the safe harbor of his gentleness and reassurance. He loves her so…. Emily clenches her teeth and wills herself to be present, to be in the arms of the man she adores and not think on anything but their own happiness that they have right now. 

She squeezes his shoulders and kisses the side of his head. 

“I have a meeting with my modiste tomorrow,” she tells him. “He’s going to be fashioning me something magnificent for the ceremony.”

“What colors?” Corvo asks, picking his head up to smile at her, so gently, so sweet. “Tell me so I can avoid dressing like your suitor.” The better to conceal the truth, Emily knows. Tradition had it where the Ascendant’s chosen partner – whether secret or not – would usually dress in a similar style. Supposedly to indicate harmonious thought for a harmonious future.

“Black and indigo,” Emily tells him. Corvo raises his eyebrows. “With pewter accents. I’ve decided to wear a skirt.”

When he laughs, she feels the full, sweeping embrace of his affections; his fingers tickle up her back and Emily grins. 

“You’re really hoping to just scandalize everyone, aren’t you?”

“I’m hoping to have fun,” Emily says. “I think I’m owed a little scandal. One that I can control and laugh about.”

“That’s my girl,” Corvo says, flicking his thumb at her chin. She giggles; he smiles. They kiss once again and then Corvo spends attentive moments putting her hair back up again while Emily details her preliminary plans for the Rite. For a while, they forget about the far, ugly future, content to bask in the comfort of simply being together.

“Your Majesty, would you like to sit down while I pin your arms?”

Martinique is getting a one hundred percent tip on top of this commission, Emily decides.

“I would, thank you,” she says, and carefully lowers herself into the chair upholstered in slate colored silk. She sits with her back straight and her ankles tucked politely to one side, biting down ruthlessly on the inside of her cheek to keep her focus. 

Into the dark hours of this morning, Emily sat by the shrine in the saferoom and smoked hookah until the room was full of sweet smoke. It clouded her eyes and hazed out her mind and she put aside her fear and loathing of the council naysayers. It was simpler after that to simply be, to remember Corvo’s smile and familiar hands. 

Nearabout dawnlight, Emily drifted away on the soft and untroubled reminder that she could erase all of it. She traced her fingernails over the Mark on her hand and finally found sleep, envisioning an artifice of peace that she could have if she just…. If she simply took Corvo and left it all behind.

Three hours of inebriated sleep and she rose from the floor in front of the shrine, washed, dressed, composed herself. She met with Elliot Le Roy and reviewed his list for her planning committee while he gave her a placid and understanding smile beneath viper’s eyes. 

It’s not even ten o’ clock yet. Emily has been teetering and listing the entire time while Martinique works with his tape measure snapping in his hands like a whip.

At least she’s celebrated in this space, not judged for the redness in her eyes and the shaking in her fingertips. 

The fabric selections are perfect. Emily was keen on the textile exports at the beginning of this year and knows that the black cotton that had been patterned for her waistcoat is the very last of the Ke Ling Hua for the season. It certainly must have cost a fortune to haggle for. She runs the numbers in her mind against the royal treasury while Martinique kneels by her side and pins the fabric with deft fingers. 

“I’d love a second chance to convince you about that lingerie set, Empress,” Martinique says as he works. Emily has only a tired laugh to offer in return. “The work I’ve done for you these past years has been what I’ve always dreamed of. Honestly, I’d just be damn pleased with myself if I could custom make each and every layer of your Rite ensemble.”

“I’d still be wearing the underwear you make, you realize,” Emily tells him.

“Hardly the point,” he argues. “You know how long it’s been since anyone wore a _gown_ in Dunwall tower?” She knows. “Centuries. This is decadence, elegance, revitalization…. This project is the sort of thing that all others in my field would sell their souls for.”

Emily turns to those dark, clever eyes and sees the Outsider for just a moment, in her sleepless vision. She blinks and Martinique is averting his gaze with the modesty expected of a gentry attendant, his black bangs falling over his face before he brushes them aside again. 

“I’m not so prideful that I wouldn’t beg you for the opportunity,” he says, making a note in his book with a soft-tipped oil pencil.

“I always thought all the begging I’d be subjected to about my undergarments would involve removing them,” Emily says. Her filter has positively deserted her; it’s too much effort to maintain both that and her posture.

“It’s my endeavor to have you _clothed_ , your Majesty, not unclothed,” Martinique tells her, unfazed and almost bored with the insinuation. One hundred and twenty percent tip.

“I’ll reconsider it,” Emily says. “I’m not making any promises.”

“Not at all, Ma’am,” Martinique agrees. “Did you decide on what motif you wanted for your fascinator?”

Emily leans her chin on her left hand and stares out of the nearest window towards the fog-white morning, the sun reflecting off the overcast and the cloud-shadows cast across the rooftops. 

“I did like the sparrow that you showed me,” she says.

“I thought you might.”

“I’m not settled on it, though,” Emily continues. “Could you sketch out some more options? Something animalistic, a little more outrageous.”

“By your definition of outrageous being contrary to every other nobleperson’s definition?”

“Yes, exactly.” Emily turns and looks straight down at him; Martinique raises his eyebrows at her. “I’d rather be described as ‘vulgar’ than ‘opulent,’ you understand.”

His smile is sly and he bows his head in agreement. 

“I understand perfectly, my Empress.”

He’s understood her from the moment she had him summoned to her court at the age of seventeen. Prodigious and sharp-tongued and unabashedly prideful. Some days she wishes he weren’t so in demand all over the Empire; Martinique would make an interesting friend.

Emily keeps finding herself existing in these lives where she doesn’t have to face the gilded trappings of her empirical cage. She entertains the thoughts and closes them like books to shelve and revisit in quiet moments when she wishes the ink would swell up like storm surge and sweep her out somewhere else. Somewhere every impulse isn’t scrutinized. Somewhere Corvo wouldn’t have to hide as a guard behind her but could hold her hand. 

If only there were a reality she were partial to where her vulgarity was lauded and not scorned. Days go by, now, and Emily feels more like a wolf in a woman’s skin.

“How do you like the idea of a skull?” Martinique is asking her, drawing Emily gently away from a fury with no blood behind it (no blood to offer, she’s so, so tired).

“A skull,” Emily repeats and turns to look at the page of the notebook he holds up to her. Next to the hasty scrawling of his notes, there are a few rough sketches of various beast skulls. Some with sharp teeth and others with antlers or beaks.

“It’d be rather gauche, wouldn’t it?” Martinique offers. “I could embellish with silks and satin. Even lace, if you wanted.”

“Handmade?” Emily scoffs, though there’s a bit of a rise to her heartbeat. “You’ll never be able to sleep if you do all that. Even still, you’re trying to kit my boudoir. I’m starting to wonder if you’re suicidal, Martinique, and hoping that you’ll die the way you lived: fingers bloodied at the whim of your passion.”

“You see right through me,” he says, arching a dark eyebrow at her.

“Takes one to know one,” Emily sighs and stares out the window again. She has no passion for the throne but a sort of eternally-hushed rage that she checks and channels. Sometimes it does make a comfortable and macabre escape-fantasy, imagining that she’ll die on that chair, spitting blood. Then she remembers her mother on Daud’s blade and changes her mind.

“I’m merely suggesting the option,” Martinique offers. 

“A raven skull,” Emily decides on an impulse. From the corner of her eye, she can see him take pause at that, assessing her. Expertly practiced, she keeps her features still; her voice – though weary – betrays not a thing. “That’s nice and morbid, isn’t it? Yes, a raven’s skull will do nicely.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He’s smiling to himself as he writes.

“Embellish it as you see fit with the rest of the ensemble,” Emily tells him. “You know your vision better than I do.”

“Though I imagine in a month’s time, you’ll know it just as intimately,” Martinique says. 

In a month’s time, Emily will be adorned in Martinique’s revitalization of pre-Rectification salaciousness and couture. She’ll descend the grand stair into the ballroom and turn every single head, spend the whole evening smiling behind a perfectly painted mask and then make the ceremonial adjournment to fuck her own father by the blessings of the heavenly conjunctions in the Abbey’s ignorance. The best she can hope from all this is that perhaps she’ll start a new trend and maybe some of the courtiers she entertains will follow her lead and start wearing skirts; the better to slip her hand up along young thighs in a tease and have them swooning, she supposes.

Her stomach twists in revulsion but this is it: this will be the fall after her rise. A pretense of obedience and duty and then a however-long engagement and then, and then, and then….

Martinique leaves with a bow and Emily dismisses him with a smile that falls from her lips as soon as the door is locked. 

It could be the lack of sleep or how she had nothing to eat this morning save a serving of fruit, picked at idly to humor a hollow stomach. Emily can’t seem to quiet the tumult of her own heart. If she knew where Corvo was, she would go to him, even though he can do nothing to stem this particular tide. It would be a relief to just have him near.

What a sham it all is. Emily falls into the chair and drops her head in her hands. What sort of vapid offering is this to give Corvo? The ceremonial surrendering of her so-called virginity, even though she already entrusted her first pleasures to him years ago…. They’ve come to the end. This is the last fantasy of happiness they can have together and then the bars will close. The cages will snap shut and separate them forever.

Emily weeps. Her tears form in the very back of her throat and spill angrily from her eyes, warm and tickling against her palms. Forget surrendering to a dramatic death on her throne, Emily so voraciously wishes she could kill everything that ever filled her with shame. Every person who wants her to stay atop a harmless pedestal. Every cutting word designed to fence her powers in.

She wants that blood on her hands. The tears wetting her palms are a poor facsimile and simply do not sate that craving.

There are no books that exist containing this knowledge. She cannot follow arcane manuals and treatises that will reveal the path she seeks. Neither will she construct imagined rituals based on heretical symbolism, hoping elegant and morbid arrangements of artifacts and spell ingredients will curry some sort of favor. The Void is much more than a doorway at which to beg.

If it is indeed a threshold, Emily won’t stand there and knock. She will unlock it herself. She will enter and call its dwelling her own.

“How very novel of you,” the Outsider greets her in her dreams (or in her waking visions, suspended between one familiar truth and another). “The last who wanted to harness the Void as you turned to nameless ash.” He walks at her side and she continues onward, searching along no horizon lines but faithful that her solace will be here. 

“If I simply wanted to gain, I’d never be satisfied,” Emily tells her friend. “I’m not making this bid without bringing compensation.”

“You say as if the Void cares for barter,” the Outsider says. “You will not gain, dear Emily, you will only lose.”

“I think otherwise,” Emily says. “I can see the future laid out before me. I know exactly what I will lose, exactly what I will become for that loss. As long as I have other paths that won’t lead me to that end, I _will_ take them. Until there’s nothing left of me to forfeit.”

She’s biased by her own heartache but Emily knows that the night of her Rite will be the last joy she’ll be able to have with Corvo before she breaks his heart with her announcement to begin courting the very next day. She’ll perhaps have time – a few years – to endure a line of courtiers, pretend to humor them, play and discard like a fickle Empress, make herself that much more a prize while fending off growing noble outrage that she won’t decide…. Once the political pressure buries her, she’ll have to commit to a decision. For the rest of her life, she’ll have Corvo standing faithfully at her back, loving her, but never touching her ever again.

There will only ever be sadness in his eyes, wrapped so carefully around his love for her, his loyalty. He’ll never leave her side and he’ll suffer all the while. 

Corvo must not endure this sort of torture. Emily certainly refuses to, even if she has to shred her own life and all of her gifts away. 

“If we can’t have joy together,” she tells the Outsider, despair and fury trembling in the marrow of her, “then I don’t want _anything_. Those are my terms.” 

“For someone so determined on Corvo’s happiness, you’re neglecting to think on how your…evident self-sacrifice might very well break his heart.” He considers her a moment with slow-blinking eyes and a soft frown. “Would it truly make him happy if you became a monster in pursuit of this chance?”

“He loves me,” Emily says. “He would never abandon me, no matter what became of me.”

“You’re right about that,” the Outsider agrees, now amused. “To his own detriment and even yours, perhaps.”

“As long as he loves me, I will do whatever it takes to make him happy,” she insists. “Even if he didn’t love me as I love him, I would still do it.” She comes to a standstill, next to some facsimile, some impressed fourth-dimensional memory of her own throne, empty though it may be in the Void. “Is that the price, then?” Emily asks the Outsider, touching her left hand – her Marked hand – to the cold constructed steel of her throne. “We can find happiness but I’ll become a monster?”

“It’s so arbitrary, what humans consider monstrous,” the Outsider muses. “Arbitrary and inconsistent. There’s no measure to it. To some, Emily Kaldwin, you are already a monster, and nothing you do or undo would change that.”

Emily once imagined herself smearing a line from Karnaca to Dunwall made of all the blood she spilled in her efforts to topple Delilah from the Tower. To say the fantasy brought her no small thrill would be understatement. She still comforts herself with that accomplishment, that reassurance of her power, on nights when the Council’s eyes still linger angrily at her back. She has no need to wield her blade here but, by rights, if she put it in her hand, there would be no argument. Emily has no doubt in her own rule. That line of blood connects her empire from bottom to top; she has marked her dominion permanently.

The Outsider considers her. With eyes that are invoked to curse, he sees into her and knows her pride, her anguish, her vehemence. Her love, too, perhaps. There is no use in testing him for answers. Either she will take him at his word that her wishes will make her hideous in one way or another or she will gamble that she can still find satisfying victory despite that. 

“I have faith in change,” Emily finds herself telling him. “For change is the only thing one can ever have faith in.”

In a gesture that’s surely the pinnacle of heresy, Emily reaches for the Outsider’s hand. To her surprise – and a quiet thrill, heart as frantic as a struggling bloodfly – he lets her. Even allows her to turn up his palm and close his cold and soft fingers around her blade.

“I don’t know any of the rituals,” Emily says, “but I’ve grown tired of following this path that’s been traveled by everyone before me. I want to forge my own. I would ask you to help me.”

He turns the weapon over, considering it aloofly and regarding her with more evident curiosity. 

“Shall I cut your throat on that altar and make a sacrifice of your mortality?” he posits. “It wouldn’t usher you into my place. By this blade, you’d only die. The Void wouldn’t return you.”

“I’m not asking to become you,” Emily says. “As you dwell in the Void, I will dwell on the earth. Share what you have with me and we will be opposite equals on either plane.”

“Quite the scheme,” the Outsider says. “Such a thing might even be possible. Know this, Emily: even if this new path is forged, there is no unmaking it. You cannot walk it alone, either. The whole of the universe will accompany you, from now until the very end of reality as you can conceive it. You make this choice not for yourself but for every guilty and innocent life that will ever exist; the consequences will be for everyone to reap. Do you still desire this?”

 _Yes, of course_ , the wildest, reckless and cruel sadness in Emily’s heart cries. Damn them all with her. Let every secret revealed by her mother’s heart be sated by the suffering of all. Even if her vindictive impulses say so, Emily can’t simply disregard what good exists among these ignorant, unknowing people. There are some worthy of mercy….

“If I create chaos,” Emily decides, “I’ll just have to wield it judiciously.”

“Spoken like a true vigilante,” the Outsider says. “Justice in the hands of mortals is never pure.”

“So may I be immortal,” Emily bites, fingers tightening to fists. “May all mortal sense of right and wrong be damned.”

The only thing standing in the way of Emily and Corvo’s love and future together is the scornful judgment of every other person alive. None of them would even try to understand. It’s easier, Emily thinks, to unmake morality entirely. Spool the very threads of this ugly cloth back into an unworkable knot.

The Outsider isn’t smiling but his eyes do shine in the Void, somehow.

“Very well,” he says. “Your conviction is my favorite thing about you, Emily Kaldwin. That and your teeth.”

“My teeth?” He’s disarmed her with that.

“Not so much the literal existence of them,” the Outsider clarifies. “I think it will make a good match.”

He vanishes, then reappears before her as her blade floats away from his hand. Emily watches it twirl lazily away as if gravity has forgotten it. Here, before the image of her throne, she stands with the Outsider closer than he has ever come. He has no fragrance but somehow Emily is reminded of the gritty, brined scent of the docks. Salt-crusted pilings at the piers and the age-old lullaby of the tides…. The Outsider brings all these sweet, familiar things to the forefront of her thoughts.

While she’s lost in the seascape of his accursed and beautiful eyes, her sword stabs through his back. It pierces all the way through his chest, then punctures Emily right in the sternum. The bone breaks. Her heart is gouged. Blood the color of whale oil drips along the blade and into her wound.

The pain is immense. Emily’s breath has become stone in her lungs.

His smile is gentle, almost playful.

“For your sake, I hope you’re fond of me,” the Outsider says. His fingers, soft and cold as seafoam, caress her cheek. “Or even if you are not. Perhaps you’d prefer to have an eternal adversary. It would certainly be a change for me.”

His voice ebbs like a wave retreating. Emily falls.


End file.
